


Nouveau

by Chessurkitty987



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Pre-Canon, Pre-War, art nouveau, mild man/science vs. nature, technically stand alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 10:59:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14055498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chessurkitty987/pseuds/Chessurkitty987
Summary: All of her musings are trapped in coloured glass and metal.





	Nouveau

Paris is awash with flowers in the summer, some twice as tall as a man and glowing from the inside, others more frequently covering the buildings and tiles of the city. Signs and words are their only disruption, and even then they appear to have grown from the surrounding weave of metal railings and stalks. The old new art is everywhere and Isabel won’t admit to enjoying the style, not openly, because then she would have to empathise with the thousands of others who do the same. But she wanders through the city alone sometimes and appreciates the structures, the buildings, the posters, when nobody is around to watch her doing so. There is beauty in the melding of the natural world and the manmade structures supporting it; the brightness and the flowing symmetry of coloured glass and metal provide the illusion of nature. Trapped in a single image, it’s all perfect in a way that nature never is and she wonders sometimes if such things could ever be found, or if the artists conjured them up from nothing. The colours and shapes begin to infect her own view of the world the longer she stays there, everything glowing and symmetrically beautiful, and are entirely shattered as a result by the time she flees.

Two years after they become acquainted and Europe begins the slow process of ripping itself apart, he admits to having been there as well, a passing comment to someone else which they both appear to ignore. Isabel tries to ignore it, knows very well that for once it isn’t malicious or manipulative. She wouldn’t have known him at all then, and if he’d heard of her it would likely be limited; she can’t imagine him looking in to her work without some kind of necessity. They may not have looked twice at each other; at least she knows she would have likely ignored him. But they could, they could have met, they could have talked - about a shared lack of appreciation in their respective circles, or the state of the world, or any other number of things. If that had happened, would she have left Paris unscathed? Perhaps not; after all, humanity is so very fallible. But to have someone could have been easier, a reassurance that she wasn’t so isolated and didn’t need to run so far, so soon. Perhaps she could have been a little less damaged: a small measure of consolation she would be unable to appreciate had it happened. She can only imagine how their work in war would have been affected had they met before, had they talked for the first time as people instead of as captor and captive. If they had met undamaged in one of the buildings covered in flowing metal and stone, how would they have seen each other?

But all of her musings are trapped in coloured glass and metal, a set of immovable and flowing images. Occasionally they glow in the light, perfect in a way that reality never is and she’s left to wonder if such things could ever be found, or if she simply conjured them up from nothing.


End file.
